


untitled love, pencil on paper

by ishouldwritethatdown



Category: Within the Wires (Podcast)
Genre: Developing Relationship, Domestic, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, Introspection, Kissing, Minor Illness, Mistletoe, Romance but also Romanticism, Sharing a Bed, Slice of Life, Storms, cabin fever
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-13
Updated: 2020-01-13
Packaged: 2021-02-27 12:14:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,654
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22246933
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ishouldwritethatdown/pseuds/ishouldwritethatdown
Summary: Cornwall. Winter, 1971. A storm, an old house on an island. A glamourous artist with secrets aplenty. This is the Gothic novel Roimata used to daydream of inhabiting. She wonders what her younger self might think of her as a protagonist.Too indecisive. Spends too much time thinking and not enough acting. Why won't she just tell her how she feels!The groundwork for any great painting is the sketch. The groundwork for any good relationship is... something Roimata and Claudia are going to have to figure out.
Relationships: Claudia Atieno/Roimata Mangakāhia
Kudos: 1





	untitled love, pencil on paper

The phone was ringing. Claudia rarely answered the phone herself – she preferred to have her correspondences on her own terms. Sometimes guests, new ones, answered the phone and passed on some message for Claudia, receiving an eye roll in response. What might have been a good deed in another house was just troublesome in this one. Roimata had felt bad for breaking some unspoken house rule when she had first answered the phone here, but she wasn’t the only one to make the mistake, and that made her feel better. Failure was always more comforting in a group, even if she had done nothing to reassure her fellow blunderers. She had begun to think of it as a sort of unofficial induction into the Cornwall house. Along with walking in on Claudia and some other completely naked person, both of whom didn’t seem embarrassed by the intrusion at all.

But the phone was ringing, and she was in the house alone, and she was bored. So she answered it with a polite, “Hello?”

“Roimata! You’re still here!” Claudia exclaimed, sounding both surprised and pleased.

It filled Roimata with satisfaction. She had inadvertently done something correct by staying in the house. And by answering the phone, no less. Approval from Claudia was like a warm hug, and it embarrassed her to admit that to herself. It was as if she was a teenager again, crushing on a girl with a beautiful smile who barely knew she existed. “My bus leaves tomorrow morning. Did you forget something at the house?”

“My plane was cancelled,” she said airily. That way of speaking made her sound so insufferably like a celebrity, pampered and entitled. “In fact they are _all_ cancelled. For the next three days. I’m coming back to Cornwall.”

Roimata looked out of the window reflexively, but she already knew that darkness had descended on the south coast of the former-British isles. The promise of a storm didn’t make a boat ride to the mainland any more inviting. “Maybe you should stay in London for the night,” she suggested.

“No thank you,” she said. She could hear her wrinkling her nose. Claudia had a real distaste for living in small spaces, and Roimata couldn’t imagine it made her life very easy. Finding a nice hotel or a bed and breakfast short notice in London when all flights had been cancelled for bad weather was far from a walk in the park, but it was better than nothing. Even barring that, didn’t she have any friends in London she could inconvenience for one night? Just as she was about to ask that, Claudia continued, “I’m just going to get the overnight coach back, and you can bring the boat out in the morning, okay?”

It was odd that she was so eager to get back to Cornwall, but her mind was clearly made up, so she agreed. When Roimata hung up the phone and sat down in the living room again, her eyes kept flicking to the luggage all packed and ready to go in the hallway. She’d got it sorted not long after Claudia had departed to London, to get it out of the way. Staying in the house by herself had a little novelty the first time she had done it, but that was months ago. Staying in the house alone just made her understand why Claudia hosted so many parties.

Claudia wouldn’t like to be alone for three days, not when she should be in Mwanza. Roimata wasn’t particularly excited for the return to Plymouth either, as a matter of fact. She didn’t mind the flat in the way Claudia did, but she didn’t have a lot of friends there. She could waylay her trip until Claudia got away to former-Tanzania, at least. Claudia probably wouldn’t even question it.

Roimata picked up Claudia from the dockslip in the morning, as promised. Claudia loaded her luggage onto the boat and then said, “Right, let’s refill the pantry.” The only place open when the sun had only just separated itself from the sea on the horizon was the newsagents, but Claudia didn’t complain, to Roimata’s relief. Death by mortification was staved off for another day.

Claudia also made no indication at any point that she didn’t expect Roimata to return to the island with her. She didn’t know exactly how to feel about being right.

The only part of the pantry and larder that hadn’t been in need of restocking was the wine rack, but Claudia seemed to be eager to remedy that. She popped open a bottle of red after dinner and fetched two glasses. She put on some music – old jazz – and they sat together in the living room. Gradually the alcohol (or was it the music? Or was it the way Claudia seemed to lean on her so easily?) numbed the awkwardness and she relaxed. They chatted, and they laughed, and tried very hard to resist the urge to kiss one another that bubbled up every few seconds or so.

Maybe that last one was just Roimata.

She stirred from sleep that night in such a gentle fashion that she didn’t realise right away that she was awake. Instinctively she leaned into the depression in her mattress and found waiting arms spooning around her with a warmth and softness that was all too lovely. It felt so right that the soft moonlight cutting into the room from the hallway down the stairs was the only thing that alerted her to there being something _strange_ about this. “Mm?” she managed, tilting her head around to try and understand the shape that was holding her so lovingly.

“Thank you for staying with me,” Claudia said softly by her ear, so softly that for just a moment, it didn’t sound like Claudia. Maybe it was the way she was holding her, too; like some treasured thing, like she couldn’t bear to press any harder in case she broke or ran away. And maybe it was what she was saying, the sincerity of her thankfulness that was so hard to come by.

She’d noticed.

She didn’t know what to say. Was there anything to say? Should she turn around, face this vulnerable Claudia and embrace her in return, or should she close her eyes and go to sleep in the arms of a woman she loved as if it really was the most natural thing in the world?

What is intimacy, really?

Is it skin, touching under sheets by accident and staying there all night? Is it the eyes of somebody who’s just confessed something difficult, breath bated? Is it a request for more, a request for love, under no pretences?

Is it love?

“Your heart is racing,” Claudia said, and it was still soft, but it was concerned. Not concerned for Roimata, that really would not be Claudia, but concern that she had misinterpreted, that she had overstepped, that she was being rejected. Her arms started to withdraw, and their absence was striking even for a second.

Roimata turned and kissed Claudia. It was quick and clumsy and their noses knocked together awkwardly, but then it was a kiss, and it was a kiss, and it was a _kiss_. Not their first kiss, but somehow it felt like it. That reaching, _reaching_ , trying desperately to say all of the things that it was too early and too late to say, and Claudia’s hands were everywhere, and Roimata’s hands couldn’t leave Claudia’s face because if they did it felt like she would lose her, and that was so unacceptable that she couldn’t find the words for it, she could only kiss and hold on and hope that Claudia understood what she was saying.

Claudia breathed, her chest rose and fell and heat pumped through her blood under her skin, and she said, “Thank you,” and she kissed Roimata on her jaw. She said, “Thank you,” and kissed the corner of her mouth. “Thank you.”

Roimata kissed her mouth, kissed her neck, kissed her everywhere over and over and over and each one was, “Thank you,” and “You’re welcome,” and, “Please never leave me.”

And when she’d said everything there was to say with kisses, she held her and breathed, and let her breathing speak for her. It spoke to her comfort and her love, and bit by bit she drifted back to sleep. She had never slept so soundly.

The morning drizzle was a nice enough ambient noise to make eggs to. It was still dark outside, but her internal clock had woken her up and a gurgling stomach had prevented her from staying in bed and staring at Claudia’s sleeping face for the whole morning. She’d still been tempted, but there was no room for regrets in her mind. She might have indulged in a fantasy where she finished cooking Claudia’s eggs to perfection just as she came yawning down the stairs and wrapped her arms around her waist, murmuring, “I missed you when I woke up.” She might have gotten so absorbed in dreamland that she didn’t see Claudia enter the kitchen until she was already fetching muesli from the cupboard and pouring herself a bowl, eggs be damned.

Well. There were still plenty of eggs left. And a couple of days before Claudia’s plane was rescheduled, at least. She didn’t have to give up on this dream just yet.

“Let’s go for a walk,” Claudia announced, when the sun had come and was nearly gone again. It was an announcement because it was not a suggestion.

“I don’t know…” Roimata said. According to the radio, the storm that had hit London was making its way along the south coast of the former-British isles. People were being warned to take inside anything that might blow away. Roimata thought human bodies were probably included in that category.

“Come on. The sky is clear, the sun is setting, the tide is at its lowest. It’s the perfect time. You’ll regret it if you don’t come.”

She was half right. Not forty minutes later, she got to say, “At the risk of sounding like a broken record…”

“Please don’t.”

“…I told you so.”

Roimata was in two minds. On one hand, the sound of raindrops battering the sea, the feel of the cold chasing all the sunset warmth from the sand, was a triumphant chorus proclaiming her correctness in all things pertaining to today’s weather forecast. On the other hand, it was getting chilly and dark, and this wasn’t going to be funny for very much longer.

Claudia finished cleaning the rain off her glasses before she sighed, sweeping her braids back and tying them out of her face once again. Any dishevelled look she’d acquired out in the sudden torrent instantly looked artful and sophisticated; she was good like that. She always managed to make her messiness look on-purpose.

The waves reached towards the cave in tremendous crashes, straining against black rocks as if yearning to embrace them, fold them into its depths and shelter them from the storm. Roimata felt that old chill on her back; the one that trembled beneath the sublime, warned of something deep and terrible and unknowable. It was a feeling made most tangible in a storm, when the wind stripped the skin off a man’s bones and dark clouds full of electricity tumbled around in the sky.

She was standing on the edge of it, inside the mouth of the cave, and there was something urging her to step out, feel the raw power of nature right down to her heart – the same way one might feel standing on the edge of a cliff, longing to jump for no reason but the thrill of it. Roimata saw the way the water split and sprayed against the jagged rocks at the base of the cliffs, usually hidden by the tide, which made it safe for diving. It was like a monster baring its fangs.

“We need to get home,” she said, partly because she felt like the words had to be out in the world for it to have any chance of happening. Partly because Claudia had sat down and pulled her sketchbook and pencils out of her satchel.

“We’d get soaked to the bone. We’ll wait until it passes.”

The sky had already shifted into a dusky half-light, helped along by the storm clouds that had not long ago appeared as puffy pink-and-blue accents on a stunning golden sunset. The wind, though already moderate, had picked up sharply, and a cold front had swept over the island, the storm with it. It didn’t show any signs of stopping. “This could continue all night.”

“It’s a good job I brought something to do, then, I suppose,” she said, as if they were dealing with a passing shower, a minor inconvenience at most.

“You’re not taking this seriously.”

Without taking her attention off her sketch and the waves that were her reference, she replied, “We’re hardly stuck in the wilderness, Roimata.”

She tutted, and folded her arms close against the cold. “Just a solitary island with the closest civilisation an hour-and-a-half boat ride away? Of course. How silly of me to be concerned.”

That elicited a laugh, which was equal parts frustrating (like a particularly patronising critic) and welcome (like a lighthouse in the dark). It was more than made up for, however, in the fact that Roimata’s conflicted reaction to her internal feelings made ‘frustration’ the dominating emotion. A smile on her lips, Claudia reminded her, “The house is only a few minutes away. I’m reasonably sure it’s not going to have collapsed by the time we get back. It _has_ lasted this long.” She opened one arm of her shawl, inviting her closer.

Roimata sighed and looked again at the storm. It was one of the harsher ones she’d ever seen, but then – she supposed Claudia had memory of worse. The great tempests of the Reckoning hadn’t died out simply because the human race had signed a piece of paper, but at the very least their frequency had slowed once the furnaces of war and fires of desolation had been extinguished, once mass-deforestation was halted, once chemical weapons were no longer being released into the atmosphere. Compared to what she had seen, anything the modern world could throw at them probably looked meek.

She sat down and let Claudia take her around the shoulder so that her shawl stretched across both of their backs. The warmth was much-needed, and she inched even closer, pressing their legs together and laying her head on Claudia’s shoulder. She was sketching the waves again, a cross-section of chaos; though that didn’t seem to be impeding her ability to capture it at all. She kept glancing upwards at the scene outside the cave and placing the licks and sprays of water with precision, as if it were a still image she were copying and not a tumult of action that was never the same twice.

“You’re angry with me,” she observed, tilting her head away from where it had been resting against Roimata’s, so that she could look at her.

She didn’t open her eyes. “I’m _frustrated_ that we’re stuck out here,” she corrected, and bit back the addition of _‘but I did tell you so.’_ Being petty wouldn’t do anyone any good.

“I choose to think of it as an unscheduled artistic endeavour.”

“Oh, do you now? And how is _this_ sketch of waves different from the ten pages of _other_ —”

Her answer came like the collision of wave on rock against her lips, and she was drawn into a cycle of pushing and pulling currents warming her from the inside. When Claudia’s glasses were knocked by Roimata’s nose, she smiled through the kiss and lifted them from her face. She didn’t need them to invite Roimata’s tongue into her mouth, or feel her hand slide over her back to pull her closer.

There was a building of electricity between their chests, two opposite charges exchanging energy, crackling ever closer to equalisation where they would suddenly spark and boom and start all over again. They were the storm, sweeping up everything around them in the force of their embrace for miles around. A force to be reckoned with.

A solitary drop of water found its way to Roimata's forehead, and the cold shock of it caused their lips to part and her eyes to open, peering up into the dark roof of the cave for the source of the interruption.

It was a contagious sound, the happy huffs of air that warned of impending laughter. Claudia’s smile was even more so, radiant in the dim light of the cave. They held onto each other, and Roimata watched Claudia’s eyes dance around the roof of the cave with an expression of wonder that was captivating.

“I think it’s slowing down,” she said after a moment, meeting Roimata’s eyes, and it took her a second to understand what she was talking about; the rain had slowed to a patter, and even the wind had tired some.

“Lets go,” she urged, pulling a laughing Claudia to her feet, and they found the steep zigzagging path that climbed the hill back to the house – it was muddy from the rain, but still the fastest route by far, and the porch light beckoned to them in the murky light until they were home, safe… not quite warm and dry yet, but some newspaper sheets and peats on the fireplace would soon take care of that.

Claudia fetched big, cosy blankets from the cupboard under the stairs and stripped off all of her clothes that were soaked through, which was most of them, to hang them from an easel in front of the fireplace. Thunder protested beyond the walls of the big old house, rain beginning to lash at the windows in a desperate attempt to envelop them both back into it. Claudia’s hands were still cool with the memory of it.

“I think we were in the middle of something,” she suggested, passing her thumb over Roimata’s lips.

“Yes,” she replied, putting her arm around her waist to pull her in, feeling their breath collide between them as she stopped with their noses almost touching. Claudia’s lips were parting for a kiss she had every intention of giving, and giving again, until she could give no more. “I was telling you ‘I told you so.’”

\---

Roimata sneezed and groaned again. It wasn’t uncommon for her to get a cold at this time of year (it was tempting to blame it on their stormy adventure and rub it in, but she resisted), but it didn’t get any more pleasant with the years. Her nose was stuffed up so that she couldn’t sleep, and she had a headache all the time; although that might not have been the illness. That might’ve been the attention that Claudia was smothering her with, offering cold remedies and cuddles at every opportunity.

“You’ll just catch it,” Roimata objected, elbowing her off as gently as she was able. “And then where will we be, hm?”

“Hm… snuggled up cosily in bed?” she suggested, and Roimata had to suppress the obliging smile. It was so easy to love her, to agree with anything she said and give in to any temptation she might offer. She couldn’t deny that cuddling up under the quilts while the rain beat the windows outside sounded pretty great about now.

“Don’t start envisioning something cute,” she scolded Claudia, and also herself. “It’ll be miserable. You’ll be miserable. Appreciate your unblocked nose while you can.”

Claudia just smiled. Roimata supposed that she was reasoning that she wouldn’t be here for much longer. The storm would pass, and she’d get her flight, and then she’d be in Mwanza, where it was warm and dry and not nearly as lonely as an empty old house in Cornwall.

Roimata snorted awake and realised with some embarrassment that she had been snoring heavily. A bleary glance informed her that she was alone in bed, and then she saw the sun pushing around the curtains and realised it was already afternoon. Claudia must already have left to catch her flight. She was upset to have missed her, racked her brain for some kind of goodbye in her memory – perhaps she had half-registered a tender kiss on the forehead during her slumber?

She stayed under the covers a while longer because it was warm and easy, and then her bladder gradually made more of a fuss until she couldn’t bear it any longer, and she trudged out of bed with some reluctance.

There was a clatter downstairs, giving her pause. She had half a mind to let the bird, or whatever it was that had found its way into the house, figure itself out and go back to sleep, but the prospect of scraping bird poo off every surface in the kitchen was markedly unappealing, so she made her way down the stairs. As she did she heard, carried though the house, somebody humming. For a bewildered moment, Roimata became convinced she was dreaming, but when she moved to the kitchen to behold the musician, Claudia looked as real as ever.

“Ah, you’re awake,” she said with a smile. “I’m just making some soup.”

“Shouldn’t you be on a plane?” she squinted.

She gave her a funny sort of look. “My dear, even if I could get to the mainland at the moment, I’m not sure there are any planes brave enough to battle _that_ for takeoff.”

Roimata went to the window and observed that though the sun was shining, waves were beating against the cliffs with fervour. With further scrutiny, she saw that the wind turbines on the mainland were spinning so rapidly that you couldn’t see the blades. Their poor little motorboat didn’t stand a chance – it had been dragged up the hill and tied to the ground in the relative shelter of the house’s front face.

“It seems we will have to put up with each others’ company for some time yet,” Claudia beamed. “I hope you’re not sick of me already.”

Claudia made a lot of soups once the storm had shut them in. They were good soups – but Roimata began to wonder whether she knew how to make much else. They didn’t eat together usually, since their schedules varied and Claudia tended to work through her meals, while Roimata preferred to find somewhere away from her projects where she could relax. She must have cooked a real meal at some point. When she had first come back, there had been meals made of solid food, she was sure—

Ah, but Fergus had served those, hadn’t he? She wondered what Fergus was up to. Maybe he had taken his culinary skill somewhere it was properly appreciated. Roimata traced through every meal she could remember, every dinner party, and concluded that Claudia had just befriended enough people who could cook that she never had to make anything that wasn’t soup.

Well, now she’d gone and become convinced of this soup idea. Maybe Claudia had just been making lots of soup because it was easy, and Roimata was sick, and she was being a good friend.

Friend?

Was friend the right word for what they were to each other?

Girlfriend…

She grimaced. No. That sounded so trivial. And it sounded too much like monogamy for Claudia, besides. Claudia didn’t like labels. She shouldn’t even worry about it; Claudia wouldn’t, so what was the point? They were together.

Together was a good word. It was literally true, and ambiguous enough in its figurative sense. It didn’t suggest permanence or impermanence, wasn’t trivial or overcommital. Together.

_This is my together, Claudia…_

In the sitting room, Claudia’s sketchpad was open to a fresh charcoal drawing. She saw the folds of fabric, the curl of a form under sheets – she tilted her head and realised the drawing was of a sleeping woman, mouth hanging open like a goldfish’s as she caught a few moments of rest. She felt her cheeks burn hotter and tried to convince herself it was her illness’s doing.

“Ah, there you are,” Claudia said, swanning into the room with a mug of soup at the ready. “Feeling any better?”

“Have you been drawing me?” she blurted.

She blinked. “Yes. I draw you all the time. You wrote the _commentary_ for—”

She waved a hand, “That’s different. I’m sick.”

“Why does that make a difference?”

“Because it does.”

“Because you don’t think you’re beautiful like this?” she suggested. “If we only painted subjects that were beautiful—”

“That’s not—No. Stop it.” Her cheeks burned hotter, and this time it was with indignation. Suggesting beauty had anything to do with it—Suggesting she thought _beauty_ was a mere aesthetic value and not the every part of a person, their frowns and yawns and bad singing voices. Beauty was firmly in the eye of the beholder, and she knew Claudia found nearly everything beautiful if she was in the right mood. She wasn’t an _idiot_ , either, some amateur with a less nuanced understanding of the world than the renowned Claudia Atieno. “You’re being obtuse on purpose,” she said.

“Help me understand,” she invited, feigning patience.

“Just stop it! Stop treating everything like art for, for a few seconds! I’m not your muse, I’m, I’m a human being.” The words were tumbling out and she had the distinct impression she was steamrolling flat something beautiful, but they just kept coming. “I’m a human being and I’m sick and all you can think about is how best to draw my misery.”

“Mata—”

“Leave me alone,” she said finally, and no rebuttal came against it. She had been stupid and lonely enough to think that Claudia found her special, but she was just one more guest in the house. She was just the last guest in the house when all the others had gone home, because she was sentimental enough to believe she belonged here, of all places. A place where nobody belonged. Claudia wouldn’t even be here if she hadn’t been stranded in London.

Claudia didn’t come up to her room that evening. Not that she wanted her to – she didn’t want her to. But she waited anyway, tilting her ear to the stairs at every creak of the floorboards. She tried to fill a few pages of her sketchpad, but her nose was still stuffed up and her eyes weren’t willing to stay focused, and there was something nagging at her mind that just refused to let go.

She took her clothes out of the dresser and packed them tight into her suitcase. She had waylaid her trip back to Plymouth long enough, she decided. She could decorate the flat with lights and wrap up warm under her quilted blanket and make fancy herbal tea. And then when the sky was light again and the storms were over, she might come back to Cornwall for a while, and go diving. Maybe. Or she could find another place to dive. There was a whole coast she could explore. Why limit herself to just these islands, even? She could find that little cove back in Aotearoa, the one with the sand that looked a lovely shade of pink at the golden hour…

Roimata rubbed her eyes. She sighed. She spent a long moment gazing at the inky blackness outside the window and listening to the crashing waves that were hidden beneath it.

Claudia’s room was dominated by a lovely, deep red that centred on her bedsheets. It was a nice room with fairly ornate furniture, most of which had come with the house originally and been fixed up, but you wouldn’t know it was Claudia’s. There were hardly any personal touches at all, not even a half-finished book on the nightstand or a scented candle savoured on the dresser. Roimata had asked once why there was no art on the walls, and she had said, “I like to bring the masterpieces in with me.”

It was unbearably cheesy, and she had told her as much at the time. Claudia had smiled at her in a way that made her heart falter.

Roimata slipped under the covers and waited for the air to settle again before spoke to Claudia’s back. “I’m sorry I snapped at you,” she said. “I was grumpy and embarrassed, that’s all.”

Claudia didn’t respond, but she wasn’t breathing like she was asleep. She was listening.

“Okay, that’s not all. Some of what I said was true. I sometimes feel like you only like having me around so that I can be inspiration for you. It, it’s not bad that I inspire you,” she said, and then thought that sounded awfully conceited. “I mean, well, I mean being inspiring isn’t a bad thing. But sometimes I would like to be something a little more real. Uh, tangible. Do… you know what I mean?”

Claudia turned, and the tender look on her face was made softer by the shadow. She reached up to place her hand against Roimata’s cheek. There was a kiss, chaste and careful, before something sweeter. “I am more grateful to have you here than you know. I needed something real – something tangible – and then you were here. You inspire me because you are real. Because I can feel you…”

Her fingers stroked down her cheek

“…and kiss you…”

She pressed another kiss to her lips.

“…and love you.”

Roimata’s breath caught in her throat.

“I love you, Roimata. That’s as real as anything can be.”

She believed her. It was almost – _almost_ – palpable, the ferocity with which she loved, the way it was passed back and forth between them and redoubled each time. So thick, at times, you could put a brush to it and paint long streaks of it on a canvas. A private masterpiece for only their pleasure, on an island hidden from the world by a winter storm.

Claudia grew withdrawn when the snow whirled into Cornwall. After a failed attempt to enjoy an evening on the patio, she seemed distant, with forlorn looks out of rattling windows dominating her schedule. She sketched in silence, and folded laundry with a vacant expression. On the second day she proclaimed herself bored. On the third, Roimata found her standing on the doorstep with the front door wide open, staring out to sea and in line to give herself a cold.

She was getting cabin fever. She clearly couldn’t cope with being confined to the house, but there was nothing Roimata could do but hope the weather cleared up enough to take the boat over to the mainland soon.

Her prayers – were they prayers? Did it matter if she thought of them as prayers? – were answered about three days before the solstice, and the Cornwall village across the water became illuminated well into the evening, signifying the start of the midwinter festival. The storm had delayed it, but if things were finally being set up, that meant the weather would be fair enough for a while. Not that Roimata trusted the organisers of the midwinter market more than the weatherman on the radio, but she definitely did.

“There are markets all year round. What’s so special about this one?”

Despite it being for her own good, Claudia wasn’t particularly enthusiastic about attending the market. She was reaching a state of stir-crazy that could no longer recognise itself. Not that Claudia was particularly self-aware to begin with. “This is the midwinter market, Claudia,” she answered. “It’s festive.”

Roimata had come to enjoy spending her winters in Europe these past couple years. It was much colder and darker than Aotearoa at this time of year, but that only meant that everybody was compelled to bring more warmth and light to their communities. She had spent last winter in London, where every street was strung with fairy lights and there was a warmly-dressed vendor selling hot drinks on every corner. This little Cornwall town didn’t quite have the same budget, but the midwinter market was illuminated, and a bonfire crackled down at the beach.

The market tents were all clustered together to shelter each other from the wind, but the walkways through the maze weren’t so packed as a big city market like the one she’d attempted last year. This one, she and Claudia could walk around at their leisure, gloved hand in gloved hand. They hadn’t visited many stalls yet, wandering around but never stopping for long. Roimata kept trying to sneak glances at her face, trying to figure out if she was enjoying herself. For someone who proclaimed to prefer transparency always, she wasn’t half hard to read.

“Mulled wine, ladies?” offered a young man who had managed to get down to a long-sleeved shirt in the warmth of his tent, insulated by the heat of his product.

Claudia glanced at Roimata, and said, “Please,” apparently deciding that she looked cold. A timely shiver proved her right, despite the layers she had applied before they left. The vendor smiled brightly as he handed them their cups and wished them both a happy midwinter after counting out Claudia’s change.

Even the steam coming off the drink and the heat coming through the cup to her fingers seemed to be warming her exponentially, and she made the decision not to burn her tongue trying to drink it just yet. Claudia was not so patient, but she didn’t complain about it. There was something a little more easygoing about her gait than before, and she had a look in her eye almost like wonder. She seemed to be enjoying herself, which was a relief. Roimata didn’t doubt that spending the winter months in Mwanza would have been nice, but there were some traditions here in Europe that were good too. They could discover them together, wrapped up warm with their arms entwined.

There were musicians playing in the centre of the market, on a small square stage. It was upbeat and rhythmic, keeping the market in motion. There wasn’t a lot of room for choreography on their platform, but the fiddler and the guitarist stepped around each other in circles, grinning. Roimata wondered if they’d constructed a story about this piece, in all the time they’d played together and done this little dance. Or maybe they were just having fun, hitting notes on their instruments and staving off the cold. When they finished their piece and there was a smattering of applause, somebody in a fleece jacket approached the stage and passed hot pastries up to each of the musicians.

It was only given that break that Roimata realised that Claudia had vanished from beside her. She had noticed when their arms had unlinked, because Claudia had started clapping in time to the music, but sometime after that she had wandered off, and was no longer standing by the stage.

She huffed, and it came out as a frosty cloud, recalling their visit to the Paris earlier in the year. It was a stroke of luck that they had been in the city at the same time, and the museums had expanded their collections since either of them had been there last. Claudia had got bored and peeled off by herself, and Roimata had had to spend thirty minutes searching the Louvre for her. Her short attention span could be really irksome when they visited crowded places.

Deciding that she was more likely to go forward than back, Roimata ploughed on through the market. She searched for Claudia’s red coat, but a good number of the tents were red, which made it more difficult. She could see the exit to the market, marked by a big wooden arch wrapped in holly and bells, but there was still no sign of Claudia. She sighed and let her eye get caught by a stall full of odd little trinkets. There was all sorts on this table; some of it looked to be pre-Reckoning, scavenged from ruined houses and warehouses most likely. Other pieces were clearly home-made out of similar artefacts or recycled junk, an attempt to make art out of the unwanted. Roimata contemplated a glass figurine of a hummingbird, the left wing snapped off and lost. The glass was marbleised, with a pattern swirling in the depths of the bird. It was sweet, she thought. The woman asked if she would like it gift-wrapped when she bought it.

She caught sight of Claudia at last just as she finished putting her empty mulled wine cup in the bin. “There you are,” she said, putting her hand to her arm as she caught up. She aimed to sound appropriately exasperated to prompt some kind of excuse from Claudia.

She just smiled at her as she turned to face her and didn’t explain herself. She did loop her arm back through Roimata’s, though, and it was a nice enough feeling that she decided to forget about it. If she was happy, then the trip had been a success. They continued through the market, pausing only briefly every so often until they reached a stand full of hand-made pigments that Claudia insisted on agonising over (and Roimata wasn’t totally guiltless in this, either). Claudia came away with several pots, including a shade of magenta that excited her, and Roimata’s aquamarine was stowed safely into her bag alongside the carefully cushioned glass bird.

Claudia had been buzzing for the last few minutes, not seeming to wind down from her enjoyment of the market. It was strange for her to stay engaged with it this long, so she mentally retraced their steps to understand it. The pigment was nice, but she had only been so excited for it because she already seemed to be in a good mood. Roimata thought about the stall that Claudia had been standing at when she found her. She thought about the motion of something being tucked smoothly into her coat as she turned around, and the distracting smile on her face.

That explained it. Claudia was trying to keep a secret.

The flow of people ushered them towards the exit of the market, but Claudia pulled them out of the stream to stand at one of the empty garden arbours that were lined up close to the exit, not seeming to want to leave just yet. She watched the other market patrons drift past like a content river for a few moments, and then she turned to look at Roimata, and reached into her coat.

“Mata,” she said. “I got you something.”

The box was small, and gloved fingers made it difficult to open, so she pulled off one glove to get at the lid. It came off to reveal a gold brooch inset with blue and green teardrop shapes that formed the long body and huge eyes of a damselfly. Roimata ran the tip of her finger along its back, feeling the edges of the cut stones. “It’s beautiful,” she said. “Thank you.”

Claudia smiled and lifted the pin delicately from its box to affix it to Roimata’s coat. Above them, in the lattice of the arbour, she could see the dark green leaves and white berries of a jagged plant wrapped around it.

“There’s one more European tradition we could try tonight,” she suggested.

Claudia finished fixing the brooch to her jacket and looked up at the mistletoe. A creeping parasite of a plant, imbued with the imagery of romance and everlasting devotion by humans who didn’t know any better, who just wanted an excuse to love each other. She kissed the love of her life and tasted the remnants of spiced wine on her tongue. She thought about cold winters made warm. She thought about a bird with a broken wing. She thought about everlasting devotion.

She thought about love, untitled.


End file.
